


through your teeth

by modernpatroclus



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 06:30:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7423726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/modernpatroclus/pseuds/modernpatroclus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>prompt: andreil + "things you said through your teeth"</p><p>//</p><p>Andrew’s phone rang where he clutched it in his fist. It was blaring Neil’s ringtone. As he answered, the rest of the Foxes crowded around him, Dan demanding, “Is it Neil?”</p><p>Andrew ignored her and said, “Neil,” into the phone. Neil didn’t respond to him, though. He listened to a voice beg on a whisper, “Please, please don’t.”</p><p>It was Neil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	through your teeth

Fear was something Andrew Minyard made a point to never feel.

But just like with the asshole who caused it, caring about someone was something else Andrew made a point never to do.

Neil Josten was the cause of many of Andrew’s problems. (And, he’d never admit, the solution to many more.)

Three hours ago, Neil gave Andrew what wasn’t a goodbye but sure as hell had felt like one. Three hours ago, Neil disappeared from Andrew’s sight in the midst of a riot, leaving behind the only things he valued. As if he wanted Andrew to know he didn’t leave by choice – then why did it feel like a goodbye? The only item missing from Neil’s bag was his phone.

One hour ago, all of the displaced Foxes were rounded up from various frenzied hospitals in New York near the school they’d played four hours before.

Right now, Andrew was resisting the urge to put his fist through the wall of the team bus that was missing the one member responsible for turning them into a team – the primary reason they were even still in the season to play tonight’s damn game.

_Gone._

Andrew’s phone rang where he clutched it in his fist. It was blaring Neil’s ringtone. As he answered, the rest of the Foxes crowded around him, Dan demanding, “Is it Neil?”

Andrew ignored her and said, “Neil,” into the phone. Neil didn’t respond to him, though. He listened to a voice beg on a whisper, “Please, please don’t.”

It was Neil.

His voice was raw and broken, and a few moments later a woman’s voice sounded from the background, excited as she asked, “Can I?”

Andrew’s jaw twitched, and Allison told him to put it on speakerphone. Aaron stared when he relented, but Andrew ignored him in favor of listening to the third person speak up, a man who sounded strangely like Neil. “We’ll slit your ankles, then your knees,” the man threatened. “And if you try to crawl away I will take your arms from you too. Do you understand?”

“Who the hell is that?” Matt demanded.

Surprisingly, it was Kevin who answered. “His father.” All ten pairs of eyes on the bus flew to him, but before Kevin could elaborate, Neil’s voice came on again.

“Please,” he was begging, “Just let me go, just let me go, I’m not–”

Someone on the bus let out a sob.

“Lola,” Neil’s father said, before a spray of bullets exploded from the phone.

“Neil!” Matt yelled. Everyone on the bus went silent after that, all waiting with baited breath for the cessation of the bullets, to hear some sign that Neil was – impossibly – still alive.

It felt like the shooting went on forever, but finally a new voice rang out. It was a man with an accent, though it was too hard to tell what kind. “Bloody hell. Nathaniel?” he asked. Neil didn’t say anything, either giving silent acquiescence or lying dead or unconscious on the bullet-ridden floor.

“Where is Mary?” the man prompted. Again, Neil didn’t say anything, but Andrew deduced that he was still alive or the man wouldn’t be talking to him.

“Don’t look. This will be over in a moment,” the accented man ordered, presumably to Neil.

Neil’s father cut in. “How dare you. You defy Moriyama by coming here and killing my men.” Everyone except Kevin looked shocked at the name “Moriyama” coming out of Neil’s father’s mouth. But Neil’s father plowed on with, “You are a dead man walking. You don’t have the power to–”

Another shorter round of bullets rang out, cutting him off, and everyone on the bus flinched.

In the silence that followed, Neil cried out. Whether in horror or shock or relief or all, it didn’t matter. It was the first time they heard his voice since he’d begged his father before the initial shoot-out. Proof that he was still alive.

“I told you not to look,” the accented man said to Neil. Then a woman offered to take Neil, but the accented man refused. “We will leave him behind,” and one of the Foxes protested. “For now.” They listened as the man relayed information lost on them to Neil.

It was only when Neil asked, “The Moriyamas?” that they could even attempt to follow along again.

The man shot Neil down at the name, and the Foxes’ confusion only grew when the man said something about “their Butcher dying.” Andrew quickly worked it out in his head: Neil’s father was the Butcher, and he somehow worked for the Moriyamas. A quick glance at Kevin’s pale face confirmed he knew more than the rest of them.

“We are giving you to the FBI as a distraction,” the man continued.

Matt said, incredulously, “They’re turning him in?”

When the man said, “You need medical attention,” one of the Foxes demanded, “What did they do to him?”

No one had an answer.

“This is the only way you survive,” the man said, bringing the Foxes to silence. “Do you understand?”

“I won’t say anything,” Neil responded tiredly.

Before the man left, he gave Neil one last thing. “We will come back for you when we can. I promise.”

Silence descended in the bus and wherever Neil was.

Dan stepped forward and took the phone from Andrew, who wasn’t expecting it. Into the phone, she tried to get Neil’s attention. “Neil! Can you hear me?” The silence was confirmation enough. Andrew wrenched his phone from Dan’s grip, and she turned to the rest of the Foxes. “We have to find him.” The conviction in her voice was enough to hold even Andrew’s attention – until Neil spoke again.

“You’re too late. My father is dead.” Andrew was right: Neil’s father was the Butcher who worked for the Moriyamas.

“Your father?” a man echoed twice.

“My name is Nathaniel Wesninski,” Neil said, “and my father is dead.”

Everything was silent on both ends for ten seconds before Neil descended into hysteric laughter.

The sound of it affected the Foxes more than Neil’s earlier begging. Neil sounded past the point of ever being able to claim, “I’m fine,” again. He started retching at nearly the same moment Nicky did, from the doorway of the bus onto the side of the road.

“Andrew, hang _up_ ,” Dan practically begged.

“Don’t,” Wymack ordered. All of the Foxes turned to him. It was the first time he’d spoken. In that moment, he looked older than they’d ever seen him. “We need to figure out where they’re taking him.” His voice was enough to return some semblance of order on the bus.

A different authoritative voice cut through the phone. “I’d rather not cuff you in the state you’re in, but I will if I have to.” The Foxes exchanged worried looks; they still had no idea what had happened to Neil or how badly he was hurt. “Are you going to be a problem for us?”

Neil’s tired voice came through, almost inaudible because of how weak and quiet it was. “I’ve been a problem for nineteen years. I’m too tired to be one tonight.” Nicky let out a sob. “Just get me out of here,” Neil begged.

A siren sounded in the background of the phone, and multiple pairs of feet scuffled towards it. Andrew knew they were taking Neil to the ambulance, so he finally disconnected the call. The time flashed on the screen. The whole ordeal had lasted thirty minutes. It seemed impossible, like it had gone on both far longer in the agonizing anticipation and far shorter in the rapid violence.

Andrew ruptured the silence of the bus when he lunged at Kevin, hand around his throat. “Explain.” It didn’t matter than Kevin was a foot taller; Andrew was all bared teeth and a looming threat.

Kevin sputtered and choked, and Andrew squeezed harder. He wanted to leave bruises. From the sound of things, Neil ended up with far more, and Kevin apparently had information that probably could have prevented at least _something._

Andrew ignored the three pairs of hands on his body pulling him back. It was Renee’s steady voice in his ear that got him to loosen his grip on Kevin’s reddening throat. “Andrew, he can’t speak like this.” But Andrew didn’t let go completely until Matt, Wymack, and Renee pried him off.

Kevin gasped for air that wouldn’t go through his swollen lungs, but Andrew’s look of menace had Kevin explaining everything he knew.

When he finished, Wymack’s phone rang. “David Wymack,” he answered. He stiffened at whatever the person said on the other end. Andrew stepped closer, but Wymack held up a hand. He stepped off the bus to argue, and the Foxes waited in tense silence until he returned.

“Coach?” Dan prompted.

“He’s in a hospital under fed custody in Baltimore,” Wymack said, affirming the information Kevin had given earlier on Neil’s family home. “They want us in for questioning.”

“Can we see him?” Matt asked.

“I couldn’t get that worked out over the phone. I’m hoping once we’re there, I can get us in.”

“We’ll set the Monster loose on them,” Allison decided.

* * *

Wymack pulled the bus up to the building the fed on the phone had ordered them to. They still didn’t know if Neil was here or not, and it didn’t have a sign detailing it. Andrew figured it had some sort of medical facility inside.

His suspicions were confirmed when, as the Foxes piled into the reception area, Neil was laying on a gurney surrounded by medics. His eyes were closed but he was conscious enough to jerk in pain at whatever they were doing to him. He cried out in pain as one person wrestled with Neil to keep him down. He was trying to hold Neil’s arms still while also not touching them too much. Andrew and the rest of the team watched in silence as the medics wheeled him down a hallway and away from the Foxes.

Andrew started after them, but a man in a suit put a restraining hand on his arm. “You can’t go in there.”

“But–” Nicky protested, but the man cut him off.

“Nathaniel needs medical attention, and you are here to answer questions. That is all. Coach Wymack,” he said, disregarding the rest of them as he addressed Wymack. “You’re going to have to move that bus.” He gave a jerk of his head toward the parking lot, where the bus was parked near the doors.

“Look,” Wymack started, tone all business. “We’ll answer any questions you have, but not until we see Neil.” He emphasized Neil’s name, reminding the fed that he was dealing with the Foxes, and that “Neil Josten” was one of them.

The man sighed and rubbed his temple in frustration. “Go move your bus before the press finds it.”

The rest of the Foxes glared as Wymack moved toward the door. At the same time, Andrew moved for the fed. The fight that followed left Andrew handcuffed to Wymack and being dragged further from Neil.

Neil, who knew he’d have to leave as he’d looked at Andrew in a way no sane person would ever look at Andrew, saying words that, for once, weren’t quite a lie because Neil believed the _“You were amazing”_ he’d spewed.

Now Neil was inside a building run by the federal government, unconscious or dead or horribly awake as a bunch of doctors tried to undo the damage inflicted only hours before. By his father.

Andrew never did like the idea of fathers. He’d resented his own as he’d grown up without one. But now, Andrew could somewhat understand why Neil was able to survive eight years on the run: it may have been horrible in ways most people couldn’t conceive, but at least he was away from his father.

 Andrew wanted nothing more than to revive Neil’s dead father just enough so that he could kill him all over again.

“Hurry the fuck up.” Andrew sounded far less menacing than he’d like, but it was only Coach and he didn’t have the patience to waste. Neil was _right there_ , but Andrew had to wait for Wymack to move a fucking bus.

Wymack grunted a halfhearted, “It’s your own fault you’re in this situation. I have to do this with way more difficulty than I should. Why am I not surprised you’re the one I’m handcuffed to, Andrew?”

Andrew rolled his eyes and impatiently yanked his cuffed arm.

It was nearly twenty more minutes before Andrew was back inside the building, shoving his way through suits and half-dragging Wymack along. The rest of the Foxes were nowhere in sight, but there was a fed waiting for them.

When he finally led them to Neil’s room, Andrew didn’t let the asshole finish his, “One at a time!” before both Andrew and Wymack were already inside. The rest of the Foxes had had the same idea, it seemed, because they were all in the tiny room, too, albeit herded into the farthest corner from Neil’s bed.

Neil, who _did_ survive, because he was staring up at Andrew with stupidly relieved blue eyes, the damn heart monitor he was hooked up to noticeably less frantic.

“Andrew,” he breathed. And all Andrew could think was, _What an idiot, what an idiot Neil Josten is, to survive all that he’s been through, and see all that he’s seen of the world, and still look at Andrew like that._ Then, Andrew thought how there really was no accounting for taste.

Andrew only gets a step closer to Neil’s bed when two things happen: one, the idiot fed who handcuffed Andrew to Wymack in the first place reaches for his gun; two, Neil sees and reacts without thinking. _What an idiot._

When Neil tried to get up and do who-the-fuck-knows what, not only was he restrained to his bed by no less than 3 IVs and 3 machines, but he also knocked a hand into one of said machines. His pained response was immediate, even through the layers of gauze that looked like he shouldn’t have been able to feel a thing. Neil collapsed back against the bed and clutched his hand to his stomach, like if he curled in on himself enough it would somehow erase the pain.

But the goddamn mouthy fucker _still_ managed to spit out a threat at the fed through his clenched teeth. The gun was put away, and Andrew was released from Wymack. Andrew _really_ hated Neil Josten and his smart mouth.

As soon as the metal cuff fell away, Andrew wasted no more time apart from Neil. He moved to Neil’s side furthest from the door and the glaring fed, and he knelt on the tile beside the bed.

Hand on Neil’s neck, Andrew waited for Neil to come out of his pained stupor in silent but unyielding support – the kind only someone like Neil would recognize. He knew the fed must’ve reached for his gun again, because he heard Wymack snap a, “Leave it,” from behind him at Andrew’s movement.

He ignored it in favor of Neil, who finally pulled his head up and trained his gaze on Andrew’s own face, where he could feel a throbbing bruise from the riot.

Neil was more drugged up than Andrew had been a few months ago, and he was _still looking at Andrew like that._ Andrew hated him.

Andrew, who devoted more energy to not caring than was healthy. Andrew hated Neil with everything in him, especially when he looked at Andrew like that.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr post](http://runawayneil.tumblr.com/post/147072303487/andreil-things-you-said-through-your-teeth)


End file.
